Marilyn Kaye: Gifted and Talented
RSSBy Lauren Barack
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Marilyn Kaye Photo: Muriel Berthelot. |
Marilyn Kaye's novels have introduced readers to cloned teenagers, a telepathic Goth, and an alien named Max. We asked the popular author about her latest novel, Now You See Me, Now You Don't (Macmillan, 2010), the fifth book in her "Gifted" series, how librarians have shaped her career, and what clues we may discover about Kaye in the characters she creates.
What role have librarians played in your career?
Corbin Heights, Thomas Jefferson Elementary, New Britain Public Library-my world, from the ages of six to nine. Along with home and school, the magnificent children's library in New Britain, CT, was a comfort zone, a place where I belonged, a place that would never let me down. My father took me to the library every Saturday morning. In the summers, I could walk by myself to the Thomas Jefferson branch-not as grand or imposing as the main children's library, but still full of books, and that was what mattered. I was a fast and voracious reader.
Do you remember the librarians?
The librarians were magicians. All I had to do was show them the latest book I'd read and appreciated, and somehow they could always find another one that I would like. I was in awe of their skill. They introduced me to Eleanor Estes, Louisa May Alcott, Elizabeth Enright, Maud Hart Lovelace, Noel Streatfeild, E.B. White. I don't remember ever going to a bookstore as a child, and the only books I owned were the ones I could wheedle out of my mother at the supermarket, where there was a rack of mysteries-Nancy Drew, of course, plus Trixie Belden, Donna Parker, Judy Bolton. I loved these books, too, but the ones I read over and over came from the library.
My family moved to the south in 1959, and it was unsettling to find myself in a completely different culture where people spoke with an unintelligible accent. But once I could understand what they were saying, I found that the librarians at the Ida Williams Branch of the Atlanta Public Library were magical too.
No one was surprised when I became a librarian.
Did your background as a librarian affect the stories and books you chose to write?
As a librarian, I read a lot of books before I put them on the shelves. For two years, I was on the American Library Association's Notable Children's Books Committee and for two additional years I was the chair of this committee, so during those years I read everything. Naturally, this had an influence on what I later wanted to write. Also, as a librarian, I was aware of kids' reading habits, and I would talk to them a lot about what they read. I got a sense of what they wanted, what appealed to them, what they appreciated, and this had a huge influence on me. I've always written with readers in mind. I'm not a confessional writer, and I don't write to unload my own feelings and problems. I save that for my journal. I want to write stories that young people want to read, I want to entertain them, so being a librarian gave me insights into this that I couldn't have had otherwise.
Were you writing while working as a librarian and professor?
I wasn't writing fiction, but I was writing. Soon after I became a librarian in the '70s, I started writing reviews for School Library Journal, and when I was living in Chicago, I wrote reviews for Booklist. Later, I began writing for The New York Times Book Review. As a professor-first at the University of South Carolina and then at St. John's University-I wrote a lot of articles about children's literature and library services. And there was my dissertation for the University of Chicago: The nature of didacticism as related to romance and sexuality in young adult novels 1965-1978. Yes, I know how pretentious it sounds-but keep in mind, this was the one time in my life when I wrote something I didn't expect anyone to ever read. And I wasn't disappointed.
Is there a character you've created that most reminds you of yourself?
My only book in which the character is modeled on myself is The Atonement of Mindy Wise (Harcourt, 1991). Of this particular novel, one reviewer wrote that the work's greatest flaw was the fact that the main character was completely unlikeable. I haven't tried to write about myself since.
But I suppose there's something of me in every main character I create. Readers of the Gifted series have written and asked which of the nine students in the books is most like me, and when I thought about how to respond, I realized that there's at least one aspect to each character's personality that I have too.
The book in which I hear my own voice most distinctly is Demon Chick (Holt, 2009.) The character of Jessica is nothing like me in terms of appearance, background, or situation-but I hear my sense of humor in her thoughts, and her actions and reactions are pretty much what mine would be if my mother had sold me to the devil and a demon had arrived to escort me to hell.
How does your writing day begin?
I'm not a morning person, so I usually write in the afternoon, occasionally in the evening. I do try to write almost every day, and when I miss a day, I feel like I forgot to brush my teeth or something like that.
Once I've started a book, I don't wait around for inspiration to hit before tackling the manuscript each day. I've always treated writing as a job, with flexible hours. Even if I'm not in the mood, I have to go to work. And I prepare myself the way many people would who have a job. I could never write in pajamas-even if I'm staying home alone all day, I'm dressed and reasonably presentable.
I like the fact that I have a portable job. Sometimes I write at my desk. Other times, I set up a breakfast tray on my bed and write there. If the weather is nice, I might go out on my tiny balcony, or carry my work over to a café and write on a terrace. Sometimes I write directly on my PC, and sometimes I play with ideas on long yellow legal pads.
The problem with treating writing as a job lies in the fact that, to paraphrase Eugene Ionesco, there are no real vacations. Even when you're not literally writing, you're thinking about writing.
You seem often drawn to stories about children with special, often hidden, abilities.
Absolutely. I've always been drawn to characters who have some sort of unusual quality. And this quality can be visible or internal, as long as it has some kind of impact on the character's self image. I'm particularly intrigued by how a person with an extraordinary characteristic relates to a conventional world. In Gifted, Replica, and Penelope (St. Martin's, 2007), characters aren't comfortable with themselves. At an age when conformity tends to be the ideal, they have to struggle with that which makes them unique.
It's important for me to note here that I didn't originally create the character of Penelope-the novel I wrote was based on the film script by Leslie Caveny. But I was given the opportunity to expand on the character, to give her more background and explore the ramifications and implications of her so-called curse.
And that leads to something else these books have in common-the question of whether a unique characteristic is a blessing or a curse.
Where do ideas come from for you?
It's been a different process for every book. A story might evolve from a snippet of conversation I overhear on a bus. A painting, a photograph, a song might spark an idea. I can stare at strangers in cafes and dream up a past for them, or a problem they're confronting. A visit to Jim Morrison's grave at the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris led to Dream Lover (Troll, 1995.) A week at a Club Med inspired the Paradise trilogy (Troll, 1996).
I've drawn on my own childhood whims for books. The fact that I never went to a summer sleep-away camp and envied friends who did made me write Camp Sunnyside Friends (Avon, 1989-1992.)
I usually don't think in terms of a 'subject' for my stories, but in the 1980s, like so many others, I was thinking about AIDS. I felt helpless and depressed and I wanted to do something. Real Heroes (Harcourt, 1993) was, I think, the only work of fiction I've ever written in which I wanted to send a message.
I do love to write series, because when I was a kid, I loved books in a series. I never wanted a good story to completely end.
What can readers expect from the next two books in the Gifted series?
The fifth Gifted book, Now You See Me, Now You Don't, centers around Tracey, the girl who has the ability to become invisible. In this story, she becomes a spy, intent on discovering if one of their 'gifted' classmates is betraying the others to their enemies. In the sixth book, Speak No Evil (Macmillan, 2010), one of the more mysterious students, Carter Street, is forced to confront himself and his own role in the Gifted class.
What do you hope kids come away with after reading them?
When I'm writing something that has fantasy or science fiction elements, I try very hard to maintain an emotional realism. What I find exciting about the series is not the individual gift in and of itself, but how each of the young people learns to deal with it, to recognize the challenges and responsibilities of the gift, to control the gift and to discover the potential. I hope that readers can relate to these students as people, not as 'superheroes.' And if the individual reader has a 'gift'-academic, athletic, artistic, whatever-perhaps that reader will be able to relate to the characters' struggles.
